Festivals: Fruita Fall Festival

The Fruita Fall Festival is a great time to be outside enjoy thing the weather, the small-town atmosphere in Fruita and the great talent being assembled by the Fruita Chamber of Commerce for the 2015 festival. This year’s theme, “Where your adventure begins,” embraces Fruita’s reputation for trails, biking and the outdoors.

The fall celebration, held Sept. 25 -27 this year, is one of the longest-standing festivals in the Grand Valley, and residents and visitors alike enjoy the mixture of odd fun, competition and entertainment. After all, who doesn’t enjoy participating in or watching a good outhouse race on a nice fall day?

The outhouse race replaced the immensely popular bed races, which provided an opportunity for fame, glory, bragging rights and not much else.

“We’re trying to move the quality of music in a higher direction,” said Frank Ladd, director of the Fruita Chamber of Commerce. “In the next few years, it will be a very well-respected concert series that’s free.”

The music acts are a combination of local and regional favorites, with more being added to the lineup. Scheduled artists include Doug Kershaw, the Samples, High Plains Tradition, Jay Ketchum, Straygrass, Peggy Malone and Lobo Loggins.

In addition to the musical acts and as part of its family-friendly atmosphere, the fall festival will have a magician and a hypnotist on one of the stages.

A committee is evaluating all of the events to make sure that favorite events return and see if there is something new that could draw even more people to the downtown festival.

“If there’s enough support for anything, it will stay,” Ladd said.

There will be more than 150 vendors on hand during the three-day festival, including many of the valley’s favorite food venders, like Cowboy and the Rose catering, Decadence Gourmet Cheesecake, Hawg Food Fire Grill, Guera’s Chili, Rocky Mountain Shaved Ice and dozens of others.

“We want to take good fresh look at the vendors,” Ladd said, “and give people a reason to come with good music, good food and good fun.”

As in years’ past, sponsors for the Fruita Fall Fest are Alpine Bank and Family Health West.